I was really shocked when I saw a demographic chart of Shanghai—not because of the large elderly population, but because of the rapid decline in the population of childbearing age.

The chart shows that people born during the baby boom of the '80s and early '90s are gradually getting older and leaving the childbearing stage. Meanwhile, the number of people born in the late '90s and early 2000s, who are now entering their peak childbearing years, has already dropped significantly.

So a very simple logic emerges: even if these people want to have children, it's basically impossible to return to the previous scale.